NZ Election 2008 – November 8

With a shared sense of anti-climax, we all became aware of a press announcement to be made by Helen Clark at 1230pm. I tried to tune in to Radio NZ National on my work pc, but it seems that everyone in NZ had the same notion at the same time and I only got about 4 words of what seemed like her potted election manifesto through my headphones. I sauntered over to the kitchen where a badly tuned TV had drawn a small apathetic crowd.

I got there in time to hear the words, ‘November 8th’, and then the TV was turned off and the gathering melted away, muttering words of …. well, nothing actually. Everyone just got on with things. Very New Zealand.

November 8. The latest the election could have been called was November 15 – not a good look to take it quite so close to the wire. There is a Rugby Test on November 1st – God forbid that the election be affected by the outcome of that – it really could happen here. And the weekend of October 25 is a long weekend here, so they wouldn’t want to interfere with that. And given that the Electoral Commission like a good 6 weeks notice, it only really left one date left in the hat.

The bets are that money and the economy will be where the election will be won and lost. It does no harm to Labour that Alan Bollard cut interest rates here by 0.5% yesterday – and New Zealanders don’t really save so not that many people are reliant upon their deposits earning interest for their income – not as many as in the UK anyway to kick up any kind of stink about it. And the tax cuts announced in the last budget are due to kick in on Oct 1st. Labour will be crossing their fingers as they hope they continue to close the gap that National have opened up in the polls over the past year or so. The Winston Peters saga will be a thorn in their side and they must hope not to be drawn deeper in to the mire.

There is less talk of National winning the election outright in the MMP system of voting used here in NZ. That wasn’t the case even a few weeks ago when all were predicting a National landslide and that they would take centre-stage as the sole party of Government. It promises to be an interesting run-in to November 8.